Reddit experiments on users, forcing them to install app or else not use Reddit

Re:Reddit experiments on users, forcing them to install app ... by lolinder on Monday June 12, 2023 @09:30AM (#36293123)

I would still say that even FOSS apps off F-Droid are less user-centric than the web. They're more likely to respect the user, for sure, than even most web apps. And a user who is comfortable with code can always fork them and customize them. But the barrier to entry for a custom experience is much higher on an app than it is on the web. Browser extensions are highly accessible to many people and can allow tweaking the experience beyond what the developer natively enabled.

As a simple example: Dark Reader has 5 million installs on Chrome. That's 5 million people who can view a web app in dark mode even if the developers didn't think to provide a native way to do so.

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Re:Reddit experiments on users, forcing them to install app ... by freedomben on Monday June 12, 2023 @01:10PM (#36297057)

My thoughts exactly. I do lots of "tinkering" with my web experience and have a few open source apps that I build and install, and the barrier of entry on apps is way higher than for websites. Even for an app that is open and friendly, it's still a major undertaking to get a dev env setup and debug/tinker. And once you do, auditing the app to see what it does is further difficult. With the web you don't even need a dev env, and an extension like uMatrix makes it pretty easy to audit the site and see what it's doing/loading.

I'm to the point where I boycott apps. I will only use an app if there's a real benefit to me for doing so, such as podcasts and music and offline functionality or those that use hardware features.

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